Theatre Studios explores the history of the studio model in England, first established by Konstantin Stanislavsky, Jacques Copeau and others in the early twentieth century, and later developed in the UK primarily by Michel Saint-Denis, George Devine, Michael Chekhov and Joan Littlewood, whose studios are the focus of this study. Cornford offers in-depth accounts of the radical, collective work of these leading theatre companies of the mid-twentieth century, considering the models of ensemble theatre-making that they developed and their remnants in the newly publicly-funded UK theatre establishment of the 1960s. In the process, this book develops an approach to understanding the politics of artistic practices rooted in the work of John Dewey, Antonio Gramsci and the standpoint feminists. It concludes by considering the legacy of the studio movement for twenty-first-century theatre, partly by tracking its echoes in the work of Secret Theatre at the Lyric, Hammersmith (2013-2015). Students and makers of theatre alike will find in this book a provocative and illuminating analysis of the politics of performance-making and a history of the theatre as a site for developing counterhegemonic, radically democratic, anti-individualist forms of cultural production.

At present, we are witnessing a significant transformation of established forms of spectatorship in theatre, performance art and beyond. In particular, immersive and participatory forms of theatre allow audiences and performers to interact in a shared performance space. Staging Spectators in Immersive Performances discusses forms and concepts of contemporary spectatorship and explores various modes of audience participation in theory as well as in practice. The volume also reflects on what new terms and methods must be developed in order to address the theoretical challenges of contemporary immersive performances. Split into three parts, Staging Spectators in Immersive Performances, respectively, focuses on various strategies for mobilising the audience, methodological questions for research on being a spectator in immersive and participatory forms of theatre, and thematising new modes of partaking and ways of spectating in contemporary art. Poignantly capturing experiences that can be viewed as manifestations of affective relationality in the strongest possible sense, this volume will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as Theatre and Performance Studies, Media Studies and Philosophy.

New Theatre in Italy 1963-2013 makes the case for the centrality of late-millennium Italian avant-garde theatre in the development of the new forms of performance that have emerged in the 21st Century. Starting in the Sixties, young artists and militants in Italy reacted to the violence in their streets and ruptures in the family unit that are now recognized as having been harbingers of the end of the global post-war system. As traditional rituals of State and Church faltered, a new generation of cultural operators, largely untrained and driven away from political activism, formed collectives to explore new ways of speaking theatrically, new ways to create and experience performance, and new relationships between performer and spectator. Although the vast majority of the works created were transient, like all performance, their aesthetic and social effects continue to surface today across media on a global scale, affecting visual art, cinema, television and the behavioural aesthetics of social networks.

Aesthetic theory in the West has, until now, been dominated by ideas of effect, autonomy, and reception. Transformative Aesthetics uncovers these theories' mutual concern with the transformation of those involved. From artists to spectators, readers, listeners, or audiences, the idea of transformation is one familiar to cultures across the globe. Transformation of the individual is only one part of this aesthetic phenomenon, as contemporary artists are increasingly called upon to have a transformative, sustainable impact on society at large. To this end, Erika Fischer Lichte and Benjamin Wihstutz present a series of fresh perspectives on the discussion of aesthetics, uniting Western theory with that of India, China, Australia, and beyond. Each chapter of Transformative Aesthetics focuses on a different approach to transformation, from the foundations of aesthetics to contemporary theories, breaking new ground to establish a network of thought that spans theatre, performance, art history, cultural studies, and philosophy.

The Theatre of Luis Valdez focuses on the life and work of American playwright and director Luis Valdez, probably best known for his landmark 1979 play Zoot Suit - the first play by a Latinx playwright to appear on Broadway - and founder of El Teatro Campesino, the oldest surviving community theatre in the United States. Built around first-hand discussions of Valdez's work, this collection gives an in-depth understanding of where 'the godfather of Chicano theatre' fits in the grand scheme of American drama and performance. Collaborators Edward James Olmos and Alma Martinez talk about working with Valdez and El Teatro Campesino; scholar Leticia Garcia interviews Jorge Huerta, the leading authority on Chicanx and Latinx theatre on the impact of Valdez work; and Luis Valdez himself contributes a lecture on all aspects of his craft from political resistance and the migrant experience to actor training and dramatic form. A concise and accessible study, 4x45 || Luis Valdez is the go-to resource for scholars, students and theatre practitioners looking for an introduction to this seminal figure in modern American performance.

This book examines necropolitics and performance art, with a particular focus on the black body and the African diaspora. In the book, Myron Beasley situates artists as cultural workers and theorists who illuminate the political linkages between their own and others' specific locales. The focus is an interrogation of the political systems that dictate and determine the value of lives (and decide which lives matter) through a lens of performance and art. Beasley highlights how the performances of rupture, which are of artistic, and historical significance, reveal both strategies of survival and promises of possibility. Artists and curators examined include Jelili Atiku, Giscard Bouchotte, Nona Faustine, Vanessa German, Simone Leigh, Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro, Ebony Patterson, and Dianne Smith. The volume is an ideal research and reference book for students and scholars of Contemporary Art, African Studies, and Performance Theory.

This book introduces a new perspective on Claudio Monteverdi's Orfeo (1607), a work widely regarded as the 'first great opera', by exploring the influence of the Mantuan Accademia deglia Invaghiti, the group which hosted the opera's performance, and to which the libretto author, Alessandro Striggio the Younger, belonged. Arguing that the Invaghiti played a key role in shaping the development of Orfeo, the author explores the philosophical underpinnings of the Invaghiti and Italian academies of the era. Drawing on new primary sources, he shows how the Invaghiti's ideas about literature, dramaturgy, music, gender, and aesthetics were engaged and contested in the creation and staging of Orfeo. Relevant to researchers of music history, performance, and Renaissance and Baroque Italy, this study sheds new light on Monteverdi's opera as an intellectual and philosophical work.

Girls, Performance, and Activism offers artists, activists, educators, and scholars a comprehensive analysis, celebration, and critique of the ways in which teenage girls create and perform activist theater. Girls, particularly Black and Latinx teenagers, are using the tools of performance to share their stories, devise new ones, and use the stage to advocate for social change. Interweaving interviews, poetic text, drama, and theory, this book provides readers with a comprehensive understanding of how and why this field erupted and the ways in which girls are using performance to transform themselves and enact change in their communities. As a white woman who has collaboratively created theater with hundreds of girls of color over the past 20 years, Dana Edell offers strategies for engaging with girls across difference through an intersectional lens in order to acknowledge the ways in which race, gender, age, class, ability, and sexuality influence girls' experiences and relationships with adult collaborators as they work to create meaningful, impactful, and often personal activist performances. This is the go-to handbook for teachers, theater directors, and performance makers who want to create politically engaged work with teenage girls.

This book provides an engaging and contextualised insight into a South African township-based arts centre that has survived the vicissitudes of steady militarisation in townships during some of the worst years of apartheid as well as the exhilaration of a new democratic policy while attempting to circumnavigate different policies and funding dispensations. Sibikwa provides arts centres across the world and especially those in decolonising countries with strategies for survival in tumultuous times. This multi-disciplinary book maps and co-ordinates wider historical, political, and social contextual concerns and events with matters specific to a community-based east of Johannesburg and provides an exploration and analysis by experts of authentic theatre-making and performance, dance, indigenous music, arts in education and NGO governance. It has contemporary significance and raises important questions regarding inclusivity and transformation, the function and future of arts centres, community-based applied arts practices, creativity, and international partnerships. This study will be of great interest to students and scholars in theatre and performance, indigenous music, dance, and South African history.

What role can provocation play in the process of renewal, both of individuals and of societies? Provocation in Popular Culture is an investigation into the practice of specific provocateurs and the wider nature of cultural provocation, examining, among others: Banksy Sacha Baron Cohen Leo Bassi Pussy Riot Philippe Petit Archaos. Drawing on Bim Mason's own twenty-five year career as performer, teacher and creative director, this book explores the power negotiations involved in the relationship between provocateur and provoked, and the implications of maintaining a position on the 'edge'. Using neuroscience as a bridge, it proposes a similarity between complexity theory and cultural theories of play and risk. Three inter-related analogies for the 'edge' on which these performers operate - the fulcrum, the blade and the border - reveal the shifts between structure and fluidity, and the ways in which these can combine in a single moment.

'Actors always talk about what the audience does. I don't understand, we are just sitting here.' Audience as Performer proposes that in the theatre, there are two troupes of performers: the actors and the audience. Although academics have scrutinised how audiences respond, make meaning and co-create while watching a performance, little research has considered the behaviour of the theatre audience as a performance in and of itself. This insightful book describes how an audience performs through its myriad gestural, vocal and paralingual actions, and considers the following questions: If the audience are performers, who are their audiences? How have audiences' roles changed throughout history? How do talkbacks and technology influence the audience's role as critics? What influence does the audience have on the creation of community in theatre? How can the audience function as both consumer and co-creator? Drawing from over 140 interviews with audience members, actors and ushers in the UK, USA and Austrialia, Heim reveals the lived experience of audience members at the theatrical event. It is a fresh reading of mainstream audiences' activities, bringing their voices to the fore and exploring their emerging new roles in the theatre of the Twenty-First Century.

This volume explores the constitutive role played by space in the performance of Kutiyattam. The only surviving form of Sanskrit theatre, Kutiyattam is distinctive in terms of its performance conventions and its unique culture of extensive elaboration and interpretation. Drawing upon the concepts of phenomenology on the processes of perception, particularly on the works of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, it analyses the role of space in the communicative structures of performance of Kutiyattam and its contribution to the production of meaning in theatre, especially in the context of contemporary theatre. The book explores the theatrical event as a phenomenon that comes into existence through a triangular relationship among the 'ways of being' of the performers, the 'ways of seeing' of the audience, and the space which brings them together. Based on this formulation, Kutiyattam is approached as a 'theatre of elaboration,' made possible by the 'intimate,' 'proximal' ways of seeing of the audience, in the particular theatrical space of the kuttampalams, the temple theatres, where Kutiyattam has customarily been performed for more than five centuries. This volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of cultural studies, theatre and performance studies, cultural anthropology, phenomenology and South Asian studies.

Putting food and theatre into direct conversation, this volume focuses on how food and theatre have operated for centuries as partners in the performative, symbolic, and literary making of meaning. Through case studies, literary analyses, and performance critiques, contributors examine theatrical work from China, Japan, India, Greece, Italy, France, Germany, England, the United States, Chile, Argentina, and Zimbabwe, addressing work from classical, popular, and contemporary theatre practices. The investigation of uses of food across media and artistic genres is a burgeoning area of scholarly investigation, yet regarding representation and symbolism, literature and film have received more attention than theatre, while performance studies scholars have taken the lead in examining the performative aspects of food events. This collection looks across dramatic genres, historical periods, and cultural contexts, and at food in all of its socio-political, material complexity to examine the particular problems and potentials of invoking and using food in live theatre. The volume considers food as a transhistorical, global phenomenon across theatre genres, addressing the explosion of food studies at the end of the twentieth century that has shown how food is a crucial aspect of cultural identity.

Voice Studies brings together leading international scholars and practitioners, to re-examine what voice is, what voice does, and what we mean by "voice studies" in the process and experience of performance. This dynamic and interdisciplinary publication draws on a broad range of approaches, from composing and voice teaching through to psychoanalysis and philosophy, including: voice training from the Alexander Technique to practice-as-research; operatic and extended voices in early baroque and contemporary underwater singing; voices across cultures, from site-specific choral performance in Kentish mines and Australian sound art, to the laments of Kraho Indians, Korean pansori and Javanese wayang; voice, embodiment and gender in Robertson's 1798 production of Phantasmagoria, Cathy Berberian radio show, and Romeo Castellucci's theatre; perceiving voice as a composer, listener, or as eavesdropper; voice, technology and mobile apps. With contributions spanning six continents, the volume considers the processes of teaching or writing for voice, the performance of voice in theatre, live art, music, and on recordings, and the experience of voice in acoustic perception and research. It concludes with a multifaceted series of short provocations that simply revisit the core question of the whole volume: what is voice studies?

Voice Studies brings together leading international scholars and practitioners, to re-examine what voice is, what voice does, and what we mean by "voice studies" in the process and experience of performance. This dynamic and interdisciplinary publication draws on a broad range of approaches, from composing and voice teaching through to psychoanalysis and philosophy, including: voice training from the Alexander Technique to practice-as-research; operatic and extended voices in early baroque and contemporary underwater singing; voices across cultures, from site-specific choral performance in Kentish mines and Australian sound art, to the laments of Kraho Indians, Korean pansori and Javanese wayang; voice, embodiment and gender in Robertson's 1798 production of Phantasmagoria, Cathy Berberian radio show, and Romeo Castellucci's theatre; perceiving voice as a composer, listener, or as eavesdropper; voice, technology and mobile apps. With contributions spanning six continents, the volume considers the processes of teaching or writing for voice, the performance of voice in theatre, live art, music, and on recordings, and the experience of voice in acoustic perception and research. It concludes with a multifaceted series of short provocations that simply revisit the core question of the whole volume: what is voice studies?

What sort of thing is a theatre image? How is it produced and consumed? Who is responsible for the images? Why do the images stay with us when the performance is over? How do we learn to speak of what we see and imagine? And how do we relate what we experience in the theatre to what we share with each other of the world? The Illuminated Theatre is a book about theatricality and spectatorship in the early twenty-first century. In a wide-ranging analysis that draws upon theatrical, visual and philosophical approaches, it asks how spectators and audiences negotiate the complexities and challenges of contemporary experimental performance arts. It is also a book about how European practitioners working across a range of forms, from theatre and performance to dance, opera, film and visual arts, use images to address the complexities of the times in which their work takes place. Through detailed and impassioned accounts of works by artists such as Dickie Beau, Wendy Houstoun, Alvis Hermanis and Romeo Castellucci, along with close readings of experimental theoretical and art writing from Gillian Rose to T.J. Clark and Marie-Jose Mondzain, the book outlines the historical, aesthetic and political dimensions of a contemporary 'suffering of images.'

What sort of thing is a theatre image? How is it produced and consumed? Who is responsible for the images? Why do the images stay with us when the performance is over? How do we learn to speak of what we see and imagine? And how do we relate what we experience in the theatre to what we share with each other of the world? The Illuminated Theatre is a book about theatricality and spectatorship in the early twenty-first century. In a wide-ranging analysis that draws upon theatrical, visual and philosophical approaches, it asks how spectators and audiences negotiate the complexities and challenges of contemporary experimental performance arts. It is also a book about how European practitioners working across a range of forms, from theatre and performance to dance, opera, film and visual arts, use images to address the complexities of the times in which their work takes place. Through detailed and impassioned accounts of works by artists such as Dickie Beau, Wendy Houstoun, Alvis Hermanis and Romeo Castellucci, along with close readings of experimental theoretical and art writing from Gillian Rose to T.J. Clark and Marie-Jose Mondzain, the book outlines the historical, aesthetic and political dimensions of a contemporary 'suffering of images.'

This broad-based collection of essays is an introduction both to the concerns of contemporary folklore scholarship and to the variety of forms that folk performance has taken throughout English history. Combining case studies of specific folk practices with discussion of the various different lenses through which they have been viewed since becoming the subject of concerted study in Victorian times, this book builds on the latest work in an ever-growing body of contemporary folklore scholarship. Many of the contributing scholars are also practicing performers and bring experience and understanding of performance to their analyses and critiques. Chapters range across the spectrum of folk song, music, drama and dance, but maintain a focus on the key defining characteristics of folk performance - custom and tradition - in a full range of performances, from carol singing and sword dancing to playground rhymes and mummers' plays. As well as being an essential reference for folklorists and scholars of traditional performance and local history, this is a valuable resource for readers in all disciplines of dance, drama, song and music whose work coincides with English folk traditions.

Movements of Interweaving is a rich collection of essays exploring the concept of interweaving performance cultures in the realms of movement, dance, and corporeality. Focusing on dance performances as well as on scenarios of cultural movements on a global scale, it not only challenges the concept of intercultural dance performances, but through its innovative approach also calls attention to the specific qualities of "interweaving" as a form of movement itself. Divided into four sections, this volume features an international team of scholars together developing a new critical perspective on the cultural practices of movement, travel and migration in and beyond dance.

This third volume in the 4x45 series addresses some of the most current and urgent performance work in contemporary theatre practice. As people from all backgrounds and cultures criss-cross the globe with an ever-growing series of pushes and pulls guiding their movements, this book explores contemporary artists who have responded to various forms of migration in their theatre, performance and multimedia work. The volume comprises two lectures and two curated conversations with theatre-makers and artists. Danish scholar of contemporary visual culture, Anne Ring Petersen, brings artistic and political aspects of 'postmigration' to the fore in an essay on the innovations of Shermin Langhoff at Berlin's Ballhaus Naunynstrasse, and the decolonial work of Danish-Trinidadian artist Jeannette Ehlers. The racialised and gendered exclusions associated with navigating 'the industry' for non-white female and non-white non-binary artists are interrogated in Melbourne-based theatre scholar Paul Rae's interview with two Australian performers of Indian heritage, Sonya Suares and Raina Peterson. UK playwrights Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson of Good Chance Theatre discuss their work in dialogue, and with their colleague, Iranian animator and illustrator Majid Adin. Emma Cox's essay on Irish artist Richard Mosse's video installation, Incoming, discusses thermographic 'heat signatures' as a means of seeing migrants and the imperative of envisioning global climate change. An accessible and forward-thinking exploration of one of contemporary performance's most pressing influences, 4x45 | Performance and Migration is a unique resource for scholars, students and practitioners of Theatre Studies, Performance Studies and Human Geography.

Originally published in 1995. Providing the most influential historical criticism, but also some contemporary pieces written for the volume, this collection includes the most essential study and reviews of this tragic play. The first part contains critical articles arranged chronologically while the second part presents reviews of stage performances from 1901 to 1988 from a variety of sources. Chapters chosen are representative of their given age and critical approach and therefore show the changing responses and the topics that interested critics in the play through the years. Coriolanus is an unsympathetic character and the play has been traditionally less popular than other tragedies - a comprehensive introduction by the editor discusses these attitudes to the play and the reasons behind them.

Originally published in 1995. In three parts - introduction, criticism and reviews - this volume examines the goriest of Shakespeare's works. The editor's exhaustive introduction runs through the pattern of changing scholarship and commentary, introducing the key interests in the play, from its authorship to its language, rhetoric and performance. Early commentaries focused on arguing about whether the play was truly Shakespeare's. A selection of the most important of these are included here followed by later investigations looking at myriad topics and characters - revenge, violence, race, Aaron, women, tragedy and Tamora. The large section of reviews of stage performances, arranged chronologically, ranges from 1857 to 1990. Two final pieces interestingly survey stage history of Titus in Japan and in Germany.

Originally published in 1986. Among the most frequently performed and high admired of Shakespeare's plays, Twelfth Night is examined here in this collection of writings from well-known essayists and scholars. The chapters present to the modern reader discussions of the play to enhance understanding and study of both the text and performances. Opening essays address individual characters; then some accounts of its potential and theatrical reviews are included; finally followed by critical studies looking at various parts and themes. The editor's introduction explains the usefulness of each chapter and gives an overview of the selection.

In What a Body Can Do, Ben Spatz develops, for the first time, a rigorous theory of embodied technique as knowledge. He argues that viewing technique as both training and research has much to offer current debates over the role of practice in the university, including the debates around "practice as research." Drawing on critical perspectives from the sociology of knowledge, phenomenology, dance studies, enactive cognition, and other areas, Spatz argues that technique is a major area of historical and ongoing research in physical culture, performing arts, and everyday life.

The Routledge Dictionary of Contemporary Theatre and Performance provides the first authoritative alphabetical guide to the theatre and performance of the last 30 years. Conceived and written by one of the foremost scholars and critics of theatre in the world, it literally takes us from Activism to Zapping, analysing everything along the way from Body Art and the Flashmob to Multimedia and the Postdramatic. What we think of as 'performance' and 'drama' has undergone a transformation in recent decades. Similarly how these terms are defined, used and critiqued has also changed, thanks to interventions from a panoply of theorists from Derrida to Ranciere. Patrice Pavis's Dictionary provides an indispensible roadmap for this complex and fascinating terrain; a volume no theatre bookshelf can afford to be without.